NHMRC Investigator Grant success for Kim Bennell

Congratulations to Prof Kim Bennell for receiving a NHMRC Investigator Grant for her research project 'Optimising lifestyle care to reduce the burden of knee and hip osteoarthritis'.

Osteoarthritis (OA), commonly affecting the knee and hip, is a leading global cause of chronic pain & disability, affecting over 3.2 million Australians - that’s one in five Australians over age 45. Clinical guidelines recommend lifestyle management as the best approach for most people, with education, self-management, exercise and weight loss recommended. However, OA care is suboptimal with lifestyle strategies being under-used, leading to overuse of drugs & unwarranted surgery.

This research program will test different lifestyle strategies to see if they are effective, including if digital interventions can help to deliver and support lifestyle care. Kim will also test strategies for increasing clinician and patient knowledge about lifestyle care. Findings will ultimately be used to improve osteoarthritis care and self-management. Kim's vision is to produce and translate high-quality evidence so more people with OA access better lifestyle care. Her research program has two inter-related objectives: investigate strategies to boost effectiveness of exercise, and; design and evaluate innovative models to improve access to and optimise lifestyle care. The outcomes include generating pivotal new knowledge to shape OA guidelines, clinical care and policy and providing low-cost scalable programs and tools to improve patient outcomes and reduce the OA burden of disease.